


Night Sweats

by Fudgyokra



Category: Gravity Falls, Over the Garden Wall (Cartoon)
Genre: (No Attempts), Aged-Up Character(s), Bonding, Childhood Trauma, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Family, Family Fluff, Flashbacks, Friendship, Friendship/Love, Gen, Late Night Conversations, Near Future, Personal Growth, Post-Canon, Post-Series, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Trauma, Self-Reflection, Suicide mentions, heavy stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-08
Updated: 2016-12-08
Packaged: 2018-09-07 07:04:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8788228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fudgyokra/pseuds/Fudgyokra
Summary: Dipper’s fears only haunted him when he slept. God, Wirt wished he could say the same.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This may seem tangentially related to my other GF/OTGW crossover fic but only because it’s a headcanon I have that Dipper and Wirt really come to understand each other through discussions of their trauma. This was hastily typed out because I just needed to blow off steam, so forgive me if it seems rushed. Can be read as friendship or romance, really.

“So you have nightmares pretty often, huh?” Wirt asked, looking at the man who sat beside him on the wooden steps of the Mystery Shack. He didn’t know exactly how they’d gotten onto this subject, or even how long they’d been sitting there talking, but he noticed it had gotten dark around them and none of the other inhabitants of the Shack had been heard from for almost an hour, meaning they were asleep by now or at least keeping to themselves.

From where he sat, leaned up against the railing, Dipper nodded.

Dipper’s fears only haunted him when he slept. God, Wirt wished he could say the same. His weren’t confined to his sleep but present and tangible in the world around him. He hated snow. He hated pumpkins. He hated Halloween. Between October and December Wirt could barely breath without a panic. It was like walking on eggshells for three months: tentative and nerve-wracking.

 “I consider you pretty lucky,” he confessed, “if you only suffer in your dreams.”

Dipper looked taken aback and emphasized this by scoffing. “What part of that sounds lucky?”

Wirt stared down at his hands as he twiddled his thumbs. “In the daytime you’re perfectly fine. You act totally normal and nothing seems to scare you. It’s incredible.”

“I’m not afraid of anything because I’ve seen worse,” Dipper replied, tone softening enough for him to coax the other’s shoulders out of their rigidity. “If I seem brave it’s probably just disguised paranoia. I’m always on the defensive because I’m always wondering what would happen if Bill could come back—if it could all begin again. Bill haunts me to this day, and sometimes…”

There was a pause, during which Dipper studied his gloved hand so intently that Wirt wondered what could possibly be so interesting about it all of the sudden. Then, just a moment later, he pulled the glove off, revealing the bloodied nails and bandaged fingers of a compulsive skin-picker. “Sometimes,” he continued, “it gets too bad to bear.”

Wirt regretted saying anything in the first place. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean it in any sort of way.”

Softly and seriously all at once, Dipper surprised him by asking him if he’d ever tried to kill himself. Shocked, Wirt answered ardently to the negative. His own question hung painfully in the air. He couldn’t ask. He couldn’t.

Dipper continued staring past the front lawn into the nothingness of night, and finally, with a little bit of choking on his words and a lot of hesitance, Wirt gathered the courage to ask, “Have you?”

To his relief, Dipper shook his head. “But I’ve thought about it. Not really seriously, just… Well, doing it would be exactly what Bill would want. For so long my only reason for staying alive was to spite him. Even after he was gone my life revolved around him. He controlled everything I did without even being here.”

Wirt paled. He wasn’t sure what to say to that, but luckily Dipper had him covered on that front. “But now I’m alive because I want to be. I know he’s not coming back, and I know that even if hell on earth were to happen right now, I’d have people who would stick with me. Y’know, in a way, you helped me realize that.”

“Me?” Wirt asked, dumbfounded. What could he possibly have taught a man who’d survived the apocalypse?

“Remember when you and Greg first moved into the Shack? That first weekend we spent together?”

Wirt nodded slowly. He remembered it very, very well.

* * *

 

It was only a summer ago that the brothers happened to roll into town, nothing but a bag of clothes each and barely ten dollars between them. When they met Stanley and Stanford Pines in the shopping square that morning, it was like something clicked into place for both parties…like the Pines twins had seen something in them that they’d been through themselves. They offered them a place to stay for a while in exchange for a little help around the Shack. Even today, Wirt still thanked them every chance he got for their graciousness.

Wirt and Greg met the younger Pines twins the day after their sixteenth birthday party. There was a massive overhaul that Soos had been planning for the Shack all year, and that was where Wirt knew he and Greg could begin to repay their debt.

It was just Wirt and Stan at first. The two of them stood in the gift shop eyeing attractive places for displays when Mabel bounced in, exuding sweetness in a way that Wirt recognized from his own brother. Shortly after her came Dipper, a boy very close to his own height and weight—that is, fairly tall and fairly skinny. It ran in bookish types like them, he noticed.

Outside, just past the open backdoor, Ford, Greg, Soos and Mabel’s friends Candy and Grenda were attending to the yardwork. Mabel, the delight that she was, decided to make the process more fun by pumping dance music through the house and singing along at top volume. As it turned out, her friends and Wirt’s brother were eager to join her; they stopped working immediately, instead focusing on pushing each other into piles of leaves, laughing, playing tag. When Soos joined in the fun by spraying them with the water hose the antics really escalated. Eventually they were all in the grass wrestling for the hose, trying to spray it at each other from closer quarters than was really necessary.

Stan, for his part, pretended to be annoyed for a full sixty seconds. He caved on second sixty-one when Mabel yanked on his hand and urged him to dance with her. Wirt found himself surprised by Stan’s agility (despite his age) as he and his niece whirled and twirled merrily into the yard, where Ford found himself being dragged into it until he was laughing so hard he was practically crying.

Wirt had never seen a family so close. And then, just like that, the illusion was ruined by one Dipper Pines, who stood beside him grumbling loudly enough to catch his attention. He was sweeping the floor almost furiously.

“What’s wrong?” Wirt dared to ask.

“I’m the only one trying to do any work around here,” he complained, sweeping more vigorously than before. Wirt averted his gaze and resumed his earlier task of shirt-folding with as much attention as he could commit that afternoon. It took him a minute to gather up the courage, but he felt he eventually had to press the subject. “Why don’t we take a fun little break, too?”

It did not quite have the desired effect. “Sure, go. I’m not.”

Defeated, Wirt went into the yard to acquire Mabel’s help—something she turned out to be very interested in doing. It wasn’t hard, really. She had changed the music to a band Wirt had never heard of, but of which Dipper was apparently a big fan. According to Mabel, her brother could never resist dancing along.

By the time Wirt reentered the shop with Greg clinging to his back, he saw that though Dipper was still sweeping, he was humming and swaying along to the music, which was a major improvement. When Dipper turned and noticed them, however, he was quick to become anxiously defensive. “What? I like this song. So what?”

Wirt remembered smiling at him. “Me too,” he said, “I’ve never heard it before but I like the way it stops you from being grumpy.”

Dipper shot him a scandalized look, but before he could retort his sister burst in to grab his hands, cracking his tough façade in one tumbling, twirling second. They dissolved into identical bouts of laughter as they danced, and Wirt and Greg weren’t far behind. It wasn’t a minute later that Wirt found himself bumping into Dipper’s front as Mabel spun him out of her grip and moved to Greg for her new dancing partner.

Up close the other boy was much less threatening, Wirt decided. At least now he was smiling. The four of them even found themselves singing in what could not even pretend to be harmony, though no one seemed to mind.

After that song ended, Dipper grabbed a soda from the mini-fridge and hoisted himself up to sit on the register counter. He watched Wirt and Mabel dance until Greg caught his eye by running outside. As he looked out over the yard he saw Ford and Stan laughing and spraying each other with the hose, and Greg running to join Soos, Candy and Grenda in their game of Simon Says.

Wirt very nearly missed it, but Dipper was smiling at him now. When their gazes met he almost looked away, but Dipper waved at him, assuring him that it was all right. Wirt, high on the day’s festivities, readily and eagerly waved back.

* * *

 

“It made me feel like a part of something bigger,” Dipper said, breaking Wirt’s nostalgic reverie. “If it weren’t for you and Mabel I wouldn’t have had any fun at all.”

Wirt took a second to process this, all the while feeling shame creep up his neck at the thought of his earlier words. “But all I seem to do is gripe about my problems to you. I selfishly ignored yours because I thought mine were worse.”

“You didn’t ignore my problems; you just didn’t know they existed.”

At that Wirt remained silent, so Dipper took the opportunity to continue. “There are a lot of things I haven’t told you. Like—like that I really look up to you.” Here he became nervous, noticeable even beneath the dim moonlight. “And I think we have a lot of things in common, so we complement each other really well. I can just…I can relate to you so much, sometimes even more than I can relate to Mabel.” He paused. “Am I being weird?”

Wirt felt a strange sense of giddiness rise in his throat. “No, no, not at all. I actually, uh, know what you mean. I feel like we really…” he made vague hand gestures while he grappled for coherent words, then said earnestly, “I feel like we really _get_ each other, you know?”

“Yeah… Yeah!” Dipper answered. He smiled at Wirt, whose immediate reaction was to smile back until he was too embarrassed to maintain eye contact any longer. “Hey, dude?”

Wirt tensed when he felt Dipper lean into his side. “Yeah?”

“I’m glad that we met.”

“Me, too,” Wirt answered, twiddling his thumbs again. “Being with you is like having a good dream, only I’m awake.”

Dipper’s focus was lost somewhere in the distance, but Wirt found himself relieved at not having to explain himself. They sat like that together for an immeasurable amount of time, until finally, Dipper stood and offered Wirt his hand. “I guess it’s about time we get some sleep, huh?”

Wirt chuckled and allowed Dipper to help him up. “Probably so.”

“Wirt?” Dipper asked, just as they’d turned to go back inside.

“Yeah?”

It took a minute for the words to come out, but as Dipper opened the front door, he said, “Thanks for listening.”

And Wirt, feeling warmer than he’d been just minutes ago, replied, “Thanks for telling me.” It wasn’t every day you had a conversation like that, after all. He felt honored to have been a part of it, if he were to be honest.

If everything worked out in his favor, he imagined that there would be many more conversations to come. Maybe one day he’d know what it was like to know someone on a level like that and have them know you just as well. Until then, he’d do his best to get there.


End file.
